Professor Christina Zielinksi

Christina Zielinski

Professor of Infection and Immunity

Departmental affiliation: Department of Pathology

Biography

Christina Zielinski is Professor of Infection and Immunity at the Department of Pathology. Her research focusses on the fate and molecular regulation of human T cells in health and disease. She has discovered novel T cell effector functions and regulatory hubs that shape human host defence and have implications for the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases and cancer. She has also been trained as a dermatologist in Germany.

Research

Christina Zielinski investigates how human T cells adapt to tissues across health, disease, and ageing, with the long-term aim of harnessing tissue-specific immunity for improved host defence, tissue repair, and immune regulation.

A central focus is how T cells interact with their tissue microenvironment and how antigens, metabolites, ionic cues, and physical stress shape their migration, residency, and effector functions. Her team investigates the compartmentalisation of antigen-specific T cell immunity across the human body at single-cell resolution, focusing on the acquisition and plasticity of tissue-resident T cell fates and the underlying mechanisms. The team also explores the molecular regulation of T cell effector functions, including a novel mechanism of cytotoxicity mediated by pore-forming extracellular vesicles. An emerging research direction is immune ageing and its impact on tissue-resident T cell identity and tissue homeostasis, particularly in the skin.

She combines primary human tissues, single-cell and spatial technologies, gene editing, and high-dimensional analysis in diverse clinical settings. Allogeneic stem cell transplantation provides a unique natural “experiment” to investigate human immune reconstitution across tissues and over time.

Selected publications

  1. Soll D, Chu CF, Sun S, Lutz V, Arunkumar M, Gachechiladze M, Schäuble S, Alissa-Alkhalaf M, Nguyen T, Khalil MA, Garcia-Ribelles I, Mueller M, Buder K, Michalke B, Panagiotou G, Ziegler-Martin K, Benz P, Schatzlmaier P, Hiller K, Stockinger H, Luu M, Schober K, Moosmann C, Schamel WW, Huber M, Zielinski CE (2024) Sodium chloride in the tumor microenvironment enhances T cell metabolic fitness and cytotoxicity. Nat Immunol 25(10), 1830-1844.
  2. Chao YY, Puhach A, Frieser D, Arunkumar M, Lehner L, Seeholzer T, Garcia-Lopez A, van der Wal M, Fibi-Smetana S, Dietschmann A, Sommermann T, Cikovic T, Taher L, Gresnigt MS, Vastert SJ, van Wijk F, Panagiotou G, Krappmann D, Gross O, Zielinski CE. (2023). Human T(H)17 cells engage gasdermin E pores to release IL-1alpha on NLRP3 inflammasome activation. Nat Immunol 24:295-308.
  3. Philippa Meiser, Moritz A. Knolle, Anna Hirschberger, Gustavo P. de Almeida, Felix Bayerl, Sebastian Lacher, Anna-Marie Pedde, Sophie Flommersfeld, Julian Hönninger, Leonhard Stark, Fabian Stögbauer, Martina Anton, Markus Wirth, Dirk Wohlleber, Katja Steiger, Veit R. Buchholz, Barbara Wollenberg, Christina E. Zielinski, Rickmer Braren, Daniel Rückert, Percy A. Knolle, Georgios Kaissis, Jan P. Böttcher. (2023). A distinct stimulatory cDC1 subpopulation amplifies CD8+ T cell responses in tumors for protective anti-cancer immunity. Cancer Cell. 14;41(8):1498-1515.e10
  4. de Almeida GP, Lichtner P, Eckstein G, Brinkschmidt T, Chu CF, Sun S, Reinhard J, Madler SC, Kloeppel M, Verbeek M, Zielinski CE. (2022). Human skin-resident host T cells can persist long term after allogeneic stem cell transplantation and maintain recirculation potential. Sci Immunol 7:eabe2634. 
  5. Matthias J, Heink S, Picard F, Zeitrag J, Kolz A, Chao YY, Soll D, de Almeida GP, Glasmacher E, Jacobsen ID, Riedel T, Peters A, Floess S, Huehn J, Baumjohann D, Huber M, Korn T, Zielinski CE. (2020). Salt generates anti-inflammatory Th17 cells but amplifies pathogenicity in proinflammatory cytokine microenvironments. J Clin Invest 130:4587-4600.
  6. Matthias J, Maul J, Noster R, Meinl H, Chao YY, Gerstenberg H, Jeschke F, Gasparoni G, Welle A, Walter J, Nordstrom K, Eberhardt K, Renisch D, Donakonda S, Knolle P, Soll D, Grabbe S, Garzorz-Stark N, Eyerich K, Biedermann T, Baumjohann D, Zielinski CE. (2019). Sodium chloride is an ionic checkpoint for human T(H)2 cells and shapes the atopic skin microenvironment. Sci Transl Med 11(480):eaau0683. 
  7. Noster R, Riedel R, Mashreghi MF, Radbruch H, Harms L, Haftmann C, Chang HD, Radbruch A, Zielinski CE. (2014). IL-17 and GM-CSF expression are antagonistically regulated by human T helper cells. Sci Transl Med 6:241ra80.
  8. Noster R, de Koning HD, Maier E, Prelog M, Lainka E, Zielinski CE. (2016). Dysregulation of proinflammatory versus anti-inflammatory human T(H)17 cell functionalities in the autoinflammatory Schnitzler syndrome. J Allergy Clin Immunol 138:1161-1169 e6.
  9. Zielinski CE, Mele F, Aschenbrenner D, Jarrossay D, Ronchi F, Gattorno M, Monticelli S, Lanzavecchia A, Sallusto F. (2012). Pathogen-induced human TH17 cells produce IFN-gamma or IL-10 and are regulated by IL-1beta. Nature 484:514-8. 
  10. Zielinski CE, Jacob SN, Bouzahzah F, Ehrlich BE, Craft J. (2005). Naive CD4+ T cells from lupus-prone Fas-intact MRL mice display TCR-mediated hyperproliferation due to intrinsic threshold defects in activation. J Immunol 174:5100-9.